For wedding and portrait photographers, one of the most enjoyable parts of a project is the actual photographic element with the laborious work starting when the time comes to organize files, edit and ultimately provide the finished product. To help make this process less cumbersome, Canon U.S.A. Inc., a leader in digital imaging, today announced the launch of a new EOS 7D Studio Version DSLR Camera, ideal for professional school and event photographers which features four levels of “locking” camera controls for studio environments. In addition to the “locking” feature on the new EOS 7D Studio Version, the Company is also introducing a Canon Barcode Solution, which links customer data directly with the image file so that it can be maintained throughout the entire workflow process, ideal for school photographers, forensic and medical photo workflows.

funkstar

Can anyone enlighten me what is great about this so that it could not be done via a firmware update? I'm having a hard time understanding what makes this body "studio-grade".

From the linked article:

Quote

The 7D body in the kit is not the same as a regular 7D. While it has all the same features as a regular 7D, looks the same and has identical hardware components on the inside, its read-only memory (ROM) circuitry is running modified code that brings the barcode reading functionality to life.

It sounds to me like there are two parts to the software in a camera. The low level ROM code which I'm guessing is not upgradable and deals with the actual hardware at a very low level. Then there is the firmware which does all the clever software things.

There is a program you can get to read them and do some other organizing, or you can just do what I did and buy the codec for $10. I could have waited to see if a free one came out, but I had work to do and $10 didn't break the bank. I downloaded it and it works as advertised.

I sent an email to Canon support and they didn't mention anything coming out. They just said that they didn't support that. I also checked Microsoft's site and didn't find anything. I even tried downloading a codec from Canon Canada, and that didn't work either.

If you find something else, please post it in that forum thread, then we can keep all of the resources dealing with that in the same place .